The Power of Salesforce. The Flexibility of Heroku.

Virtually any. Heroku is a polyglot platform that supports virtually any modern programming language and framework through buildpacks. This support is delivered in two primary ways:

• Officially supported: Heroku provides first-class, managed support for the most popular languages, including .NET, Node.js, Python, Java, Ruby, PHP, Go, Clojure, and Scala.
• Community and custom: For any other language or framework, you can use the vast ecosystem of third-party buildpacks or create your own. This gives your development team the freedom to always use the best tool for the job.

Heroku unlocks the full potential of your Salesforce data, allowing you to build more powerful, scalable, and responsive applications. The key benefits include:

• High-performance data access: By synchronizing data to a dedicated Heroku Postgres database with Heroku Connect, your applications can handle complex queries and high-traffic loads with low latency, protecting your Salesforce org’s performance and API limits.
• Language and framework freedom: Your developers can build with the tools they know and love. Use Python for machine learning, Node.js for a real-time web app, or Java for enterprise-grade services, all interacting seamlessly with a continuously synced replica of your Salesforce data.
• Advanced data processing: Tackle data-intensive tasks like complex analytics, ETL pipelines, and AI model training on Heroku’s scalable platform. Perform computations that would be impractical or impossible to run within Salesforce governor limits.
• Simplified developer experience: Developers interact with a standard PostgreSQL database, using familiar ORMs and tools. Heroku Connect manages the complex data synchronization in the background, handling the intricacies of Salesforce APIs so your team can be more productive.

Think of Heroku as a powerful extension of the Salesforce Platform, not a replacement. While Apex and Flows are excellent for building in-CRM logic, Heroku excels when your project needs to:

• Utilize a different tech stack, including popular open-source languages like Python, Node.js, Java, or .NET.
• Leverage the open-source ecosystem by using specific libraries and frameworks for AI, data processing, and other specialized tasks.
• Handle heavy computation, such as resource-intensive data processing or complex, long-running background jobs that exceed governor limits.
• Build high-scale, public-facing apps, like customer portals

Heroku Connect is engineered to be highly efficient and to minimize its impact on your Salesforce org. It intelligently uses a combination of Salesforce APIs best suited for each task:

• For ongoing updates, it uses the Streaming API to listen for changes in near real-time, an extremely efficient process.
• For initial syncs and polling, it uses the Bulk API, which is optimized for processing large volumes of data without consuming standard API limits.

This dual-API model is often far more efficient than custom-built integrations and can actually help you reduce your overall API call usage.

While you can build your own API on Heroku, AppLink dramatically accelerates the process and reduces risk. AppLink is a free, managed integration that handles the hardest parts of connecting to Salesforce for you, including:

• Secure authentication: Natively manages the complex OAuth flow between Heroku and Salesforce, saving significant development time.
• Credential management: Securely stores and rotates tokens, eliminating the need to handle sensitive credentials in your application code.
• Service discovery: Makes your Heroku apps easily discoverable within Salesforce, simplifying callouts from Apex and Flows.

No, you can build powerful agents for many tasks using only Salesforce’s native capabilities. However, Heroku becomes essential when you want to give your Agentforce agents additional “superpowers,” such as the ability to:

• Access managed inference LLM models and use open-source libraries and frameworks, like LangChain and LlamaIndex, to build sophisticated, intelligent agents.
• Execute complex business logic or data processing that exceeds governor limits.
• Integrate with legacy systems or data sources that lack modern APIs.
• Process massive datasets from external sources in real time.

Yes, both Salesforce and Heroku are built on a foundation of security and trust, enabling you to build applications that can meet various regulatory standards. Compliance is a partnership that follows the Shared Responsibility Model:

• Heroku’s responsibility: We are responsible for the compliance and security of the platform itself.
• Your responsibility: You are responsible for building a compliant application on the platform, including how you configure services, manage access, and handle data.

To help you meet your responsibilities, Heroku offers the following tools and attestations:

• HIPAA: You can build HIPAA-compliant applications that handle Protected Health Information (PHI) by using Heroku Shield products, which include Shield Private Spaces and Shield Dynos. A Business Associate Addendum (BAA) with Salesforce is required.
• PCI DSS: Heroku is a PCI DSS Level 1 Service Provider, providing a certified environment for you to build applications that process or transmit cardholder data.
• GDPR & Data residency: Heroku Private Spaces help you meet data residency requirements by allowing you to select the geographic region where your applications and data reside.

For more detailed information, please visit Heroku Compliance.